Current Scenarios Motto: "Before becoming history and even before taking place, a lot of major events are prepared in laboratories" After my editorial published on Tuesday, as a reply to Vladimir Pasti's attacks to the press, he sent a right to reply that we'll publish entirely in this edition. Not because Pasti is right. On the contrary. He insists on asking a series of questions, some of them rhetorical, some not, meant to make even more confusion upon the honesty of journalism in Romania. I wouldn't bother to answer if I didn't know for sure and I didn't have the piece of information according to which Vladimir Pasti, when he attacks the press, puts into practice the political command given in Victoria palace. The Government is behind Pasti, so this mercenary sociologist is nothing else than a trumpet of the Executive. Which means that what follows represents only answers to the real authors of the thesis under which the press, to escape economic dependence, has asked the Government and the EU to be exempted from paying its taxes to the state budget. Which is an outrageous lie. It is not us, the journalists, but the EU officials and recently, the US Department of State, that have reached the conclusion that even if the press in Romania, generally speaking, enjoys some liberties, its statute has been however jeopardised and threatened more and more by pressure imposed by people and public persons, even by the Power. There have been a lot of situations where the journalists were exposed to serious violence and threatened in order to frighten them and determine not to write embarrassing truth about local PSD barons. There have been cases when the journalists became victims of Mafia-type acts, plotted by so-called businessmen, whose frauds were revealed in the press. Finally, some other journalists, hundreds of persons, were taken to court under provisions of the Criminal Code and the EU asked for the annulment of their sentences, the freedom of some of them being under question. If Mr. Pasti, who claims that he belongs to our guild, and in addition he has a vast expertise in the field, hasn't had so far access to this horrible picture, he can whenever speak to any important, national or international organisation that monitors the abuses committed against journalists and press in Romania. Another kind of restricting the liberties of the press pertains to the business area. Mr. Pasti needs not be an intellectual, and not even a sociologist or an ex-director of a newspaper, as he claims, to know exactly what I mean. There are hundreds of economic and legislative elements that create a real precipice between what is going on in Romania and the situation in the rest of the continent. There are mechanisms that partially simulate the postal dispatches, the railway transport, the transport or the accommodation of the journalists, the proliferation of publications of local or national interest, or specialised publications, the creation of TV or radio stations dedicated to local communities. Not to mention the infrastructure needed to sell the press, or to broadcast the radio and TV programs, which everywhere is at the government's expense or the local authorities' expense. In Romania, irrespective of the ruling government, nothing has been done for the freedom of the press, from this point of view. Consequently, the local press, first of all - and the central press is not better either - is struggling, being unable to solve fundamental problems related to modernising the IT, access to Romanian and foreign news agencies, proper paying of the salaries, and so on. In order to survive, and to pay its taxes to the budget, the local press is forced to pay the journalists miserable salaries and to give up sending them to specialised courses and workshops. Even if slightly better, the situation is not good enough with the national press either. We cannot join Europe having a press unable to modernise by its own resources. This unacceptable situation where the Romanian press stands is deliberately maintained and aggravated by the government, from what I noticed, for some years on end, in my capacity of President of the Owners Department of the Romanian Press Club. The Parliamentarians at Power, in their turn, are guilty of the successive attempts to launch normative acts that explicitly restrict the freedom of press. We are in an electoral year and the pressure against journalists is increasing. The government and PSD are not at ease, it's worse than ever, because of the potential revealing, information and comments the journalists can make, taking advantage of the electoral campaign and of the fact that the civil society, the citizens, generally, are more receptive to such information than at other moments of the electoral cycle. Vladimir Pasti, with his questions, some of them stupid, addressed in virtue of his so-called right to reply, is only a menacing pointing finger of the Power. Or, who knows a test-balloon. If we want to protect ourselves, we'll have to cut these fingers of the Power and prick the balloons. In any case, shame on you, Mr. Pasti!

Sorin ROSCA-STANESCU